Society and Culture – Futurityhttp://www.futurity.org
Research news from top universities.Fri, 16 Feb 2018 19:24:23 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.4Does gender equality result in fewer female STEM grads?http://www.futurity.org/women-stem-grads-gender-equality-1681122/
http://www.futurity.org/women-stem-grads-gender-equality-1681122/#respondFri, 16 Feb 2018 00:04:54 +0000http://www.futurity.org/?p=1681122As societies become wealthier and more gender equal, women are less likely to obtain degrees in STEM, according to new research. The researchers call this a “gender-equality paradox.”

The underrepresentation of girls and women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields occurs globally. Although women are currently well represented in life sciences, they continue to be underrepresented in inorganic sciences, such as computer science and physics.

In their study, researchers also discovered a near-universal sex difference in academic strengths and weaknesses that contributes to the STEM gap.

Findings from the study could help refine education efforts and policies geared toward encouraging girls and women with strengths in science or math to participate in STEM fields.

The researchers found that, throughout the world, boys’ academic strengths tend to be in science or mathematics, while girls’ strengths are in reading. Students who have personal strengths in science or math are more likely to enter STEM fields, whereas students with reading as a personal strength are more likely to enter non-STEM fields, according to David Geary, professor of psychological sciences in the University of Missouri’s College of Arts and Science.

These gender differences in academic strengths, as well as interest in science, may explain why the gender differences in STEM fields has been stable for decades, and why current approaches to address them have failed.

“We analyzed data on 475,000 adolescents across 67 countries or regions and found that while boys’ and girls’ achievements in STEM subjects were broadly similar in all countries, science was more likely to be boys’ best subject,” Geary says.

“Girls, even when their abilities in science equaled or excelled that of boys, often were likely to be better overall in reading comprehension, which relates to higher ability in non-STEM subjects. As a result, these girls tended to seek out other professions unrelated to STEM fields,” he says.

Surprisingly, this trend was larger for girls and women living in countries with greater gender equality. The authors call this a “gender-equality paradox,” because countries lauded for their high levels of gender equality, such as Finland, Norway, or Sweden, have relatively few women among their STEM graduates.

In contrast, more socially conservative countries such as Turkey or Algeria have a much larger percentage of women among their STEM graduates.

“In countries with greater gender equality, women are actively encouraged to participate in STEM; yet, they lose more girls because of personal academic strengths,” Geary says. “In more liberal and wealthy countries, personal preferences are more strongly expressed. One consequence is that sex differences in academic strengths and interests become larger and have a stronger influence college and career choices than in more conservative and less wealthy countries, creating the gender-equality paradox.”

The combination of personal academic strengths in reading, lower interest in science, and broader financial security explains why so few women choose a STEM career in highly developed nations.

“STEM careers are generally secure and well-paid but the risks of not following such a path can vary,” says Gijsbert Stoet, professor in psychology at Leeds Beckett University in the UK. “In more affluent countries where any choice of career feels relatively safe, women may feel able to make choices based on non-economic factors. Conversely, in countries with fewer economic opportunities, or where employment might be precarious, a well-paid and relatively secure STEM career can be more attractive to women.”

Findings from this study could help target interventions to make them more effective, say the researchers. Policymakers should reconsider failing national policies focusing on decreasing the gender imbalance in STEM, the researchers add.

]]>http://www.futurity.org/women-stem-grads-gender-equality-1681122/feed/0Principals give teachers better feedback after this traininghttp://www.futurity.org/principals-training-teacher-evaluations-1680912/
http://www.futurity.org/principals-training-teacher-evaluations-1680912/#respondThu, 15 Feb 2018 16:26:22 +0000http://www.futurity.org/?p=1680912After completing training with the Network for Educator Effectiveness, principals improved their accuracy in evaluations of teachers, according to a new study.

In addition to creating greater accuracy, the training also encouraged discussion among principals and teachers about measurable goals.

“The training helps everyone in a school get on the same page about effective teaching.”

More than 90 percent of teacher evaluations in schools include direct observations by principals. However, the evaluations are often subjective, and if principals are not properly trained, the results may not be a fair representation of a teacher’s performance.

Christi Bergin, a research professor in the University of Missouri’s College of Education and one of the developers of the Network for Educator Effectiveness, says that improving teacher observation practices helps education leaders prioritize methods in a way that increases transparency.

“If we are going to put resources into teacher evaluation, then let’s do it in a way that is useful and promotes growth and insight,” Bergin says. “The training helps everyone in a school get on the same page about effective teaching.”

In the study, Bergin and colleagues used diagnostic statistics in an innovative way to identify specific teaching practices that principals find difficult to evaluate accurately. For example, “formative assessment,” which refers to ensuring all students are learning during a lesson, was especially difficult to evaluate accurately. Identifying evaluation challenges is helpful because it pinpoints where more training is needed.

Because raters can be a big source of error, the study’s findings are an encouraging sign that Network for Educator Effectiveness training is effective. Bergin says a standard training for principals may also help teachers be more informed on how principals judge their performance, which then can inform strategies to improve their practice and help promote growth.

“If teachers know their principals are getting high-quality training, then they not only know what to expect in their observations, but they can have confidence in the outcomes,” Bergin says. “The overall community can have faith in their schools knowing that their teachers are growing their skills.”

Bergin’s research team is currently analyzing whether principal characteristics, such as how many years of experience they have, can have a strong impact on their accuracy with evaluations.

The Network for Educator Effectiveness is the largest comprehensive teacher evaluation system in Missouri—more than 270 school districts use the system and the system trains more than 1,500 principals and administrators every year on how to effectively evaluate teachers.

]]>http://www.futurity.org/principals-training-teacher-evaluations-1680912/feed/0Treating addiction in prison cuts O.D. deaths after releasehttp://www.futurity.org/prison-addiction-treatment-opioids-1680382/
http://www.futurity.org/prison-addiction-treatment-opioids-1680382/#respondThu, 15 Feb 2018 13:38:52 +0000http://www.futurity.org/?p=1680382A treatment program for opioid addiction launched by the Rhode Island Department of Corrections was associated with a significant drop in drug overdose deaths after inmates were released—and contributed to an overall drop in overdose deaths statewide, a new study finds.

“We wanted to see if that intervention could impact statewide overdose mortality, and the answer is a resounding yes.”

The program, launched in 2016 and the only one of its kind in the nation, screens all Rhode Island inmates for opioid use disorder and provides medications for addiction treatment (MAT) for those who need it.

Comparing the six-month period before the program was implemented to the same period a year later, the study showed a 61 percent decrease in post-incarceration deaths. That decrease contributed to an overall 12 percent reduction in overdose deaths in the state’s general population in the post-implementation period.

Tackling the opioid epidemic

While the study, which appears in JAMA Psychiatry, was designed as a preliminary evaluation of the program, the results suggest that comprehensive MAT treatment in jails and prisons, with links to treatment in the community after release, is a promising strategy for rapidly addressing the opioid epidemic nationwide, the researchers say.

“This program reaches an extremely vulnerable population at an extremely vulnerable time with the best treatment available for opioid use disorder,” says coauthor Josiah “Jody” Rich, professor of medicine and epidemiology at Brown University and director of the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights at Miriam Hospital in Providence.

“With this study, we wanted to see if that intervention could impact statewide overdose mortality, and the answer is a resounding yes,” Rich says.

The program could be a national model for how to begin turning the tide in the opioid epidemic, says lead author Traci Green, an adjunct associate professor of emergency medicine and epidemiology, senior researcher at Rhode Island Hospital, and a researcher at Boston Medical Center’s Grayken Center for Addiction.

“People have been searching for some way to stop overdose deaths,” says Green, who is also an associate professor in Boston University’s schools of medicine and public health. “Here we have a program that’s shown to work, and it’s absolutely replicable in other places.

“Not only do we see that a statewide program treating people using medications for addiction treatment is possible and reduces deaths, but also this approach intervenes on the opioid epidemic at its most lethal and socially disrupting point—incarceration—to give hope and heal communities,” Green says.

Path to recovery

The nature of opioid use disorder makes people who are incarcerated especially vulnerable to overdose, Rich says. People who use opioids build a tolerance, meaning they require an ever-increasing dose to get the same effect. That tolerance quickly evaporates during incarceration, when people are forced off the drugs.

“They may have stopped using while incarcerated, but nothing has been done to change the pathways in the brain responsible for addiction. So when they get out, people are likely to relapse, and with their tolerance gone, they’re at high risk for overdose,” Rich explains.

Decades of research from around the globe have shown that MAT is the best path to recovery for people with opioid use disorder, whereas simple detox or “cold turkey” fails 90 percent of the time.

The MAT program implemented by the Rhode Island Department of Corrections (RIDOC) consists of three different drug therapies. Two drugs, methadone and buprenorphine, are opioid medications that help to reduce withdrawal symptoms like drug craving. The third drug, naltrexone, blocks people from experiencing the high normally associated with opioid use. Clinical criteria are used to tailor the best treatment for each individual patient.

“While comprehensive treatment for opiate use disorders has not been the traditional role of correctional facilities, we have shown that it is feasible,” says Jennifer Clarke, an associate professor of medicine at Brown, medical programs director at RIDOC, and director of the RIDOC MAT program. “Providing treatment saves lives and helps people become productive members of society, positively engages them with their communities and families which makes for healthier and safer communities.”

CODAC Behavioral Health, a nonprofit provider of medications for addiction treatment contracted by the Rhode Island Department of Corrections (RIDOC), provides treatment to the inmates. Upon release, former inmates can continue their treatment without interruption at CODAC, primary care providers, or other Centers of Excellence in MAT locations around the state. Patients also receive assistance with enrolling or re-enrolling in health insurance to make sure they are covered when they return to the community.

The study was designed as a preliminary assessment of the program’s effectiveness in reducing overdose deaths among recently incarcerated people, meaning those who had been incarcerated within a year of their deaths.

The findings show that the number of recently incarcerated people who died from overdose dropped from 26 in the first half of 2016—before the program started—to just nine in the first half of 2017, after the program’s implementation.

The decrease in post-incarceration overdose deaths, which occurred within six to 12 months of initiating the program, was a major contributor to the overall decline in overdose deaths among Rhode Island’s general population in the two study periods. The number of deaths fell from 179 in the 2016 period to 157 in the 2017 period.

Turning the tide

“What’s remarkable is that between 2016 and 2017 there was a huge jump in the amount of fentanyl and related compounds available on the illicit market,” Rich says. “So in the face of a worsening overdose risk, we actually saw a decline in overdose deaths. We’re quite confident that that happened because we’ve given people these medicines and they’ve stayed on them long enough to avoid an overdose.”

The researchers say the study’s positive results likely underestimate the effect of the program. Though launched in the summer of 2016, the program wasn’t fully up and running at all locations in the correctional system until early 2017. So the 2017 study period doesn’t capture the fully operational program.

The research team plans to perform further evaluation of the program, looking at longer-term outcomes among those treated with MAT, as well as how the program might affect re-incarceration and other population-level outcomes. But these early data make a strong case that this type of intervention could help stem the tide of opioid overdoses, the researchers say.

“People may say, well, Rhode Island is a small state and that’s why they were able to implement this,” Green says. “But there are state and county correctional systems all over the country that are the same size as Rhode Island’s. They could all be doing this, and this study tells us that they should be.”

Rich agrees that Rhode Island’s program should serve as a model for similar programs across the country.

“If people are concerned about overdose deaths in their community, they should demand that a similar program of comprehensive MAT be promptly implemented in the correctional facilities that service their community,” he says.

The program grew out of work done by Rhode Island Governor Gina M. Raimondo’s Overdose Prevention and Intervention Task Force. Both Green and Rich are expert advisors to the Task Force and study’s coauthors include the two Task Force co-chairs, Nicole Alexander-Scott, the director of the Rhode Island Department of Health, and Rebecca Boss, the director of the Rhode Island Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities, and Hospitals.

The Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health funded the work.

]]>http://www.futurity.org/prison-addiction-treatment-opioids-1680382/feed/05 science-based tips for happy long-term lovehttp://www.futurity.org/long-term-love-advice-1679612-2/
http://www.futurity.org/long-term-love-advice-1679612-2/#respondWed, 14 Feb 2018 15:28:49 +0000http://www.futurity.org/?p=1679612The authors of a new book on long-term relationships have some science-based advice for maintaining a solid partnership.

“Aristotle claims we humans love three basic kinds of things: those that are useful, those that are pleasurable, and those that are good,” Pawelski says. “And he points to a type of friendship that corresponds to each love.”

Useful friendships spring up between acquaintances like business partners and are born of necessity and convenience. Pleasurable friendships are based on the enjoyment that comes from spending time together. The third type—and in Aristotle’s philosophy the most mature and desirable—is friendship based on goodness.

“We don’t actually want someone who can’t breathe if they’re not with us.”

“We see the good character in someone and it makes us want to be around that person,” Pawelski says. “It can also inspire us to want to become better ourselves.”

In the book, Pawelski and Pileggi Pawelski take a twist on this third type of friendship, seeing it through the lens of a committed, loving relationship. With that as a framework, they apply the main tenets of positive psychology to create a roadmap for a healthy, strong, and satisfying relationship.

“There is much more focus in our culture today on getting together rather than on being together, and on continuing to be happy together,” says Pileggi Pawelski. “What happens after the happily-ever-after? A wedding day is magical, but what about all the days and years to come?”

Here Pawelski and Pileggi Pawelski offer five tips for partners in all stages of a relationship, from those just starting out to married couples many years in:

1. Foster passion, not obsession. In the beginning stages of a normal relationship, partners often feel a strong desire for one another. As time progresses, however, such passion and preoccupation can be a sign of obsession and result in loss of individuality.

“We don’t actually want someone who can’t breathe if they’re not with us,” Pawelski says. In a healthy relationship, these feelings morph into a deep love that allows each person to maintain friendships and hobbies and an overall sense of identity. “If you feel like you’ve lost yourself—and often it’s friends who first notice—it’s important to recall those interests and activities you were involved with before your relationship,” he adds. “That can help balance you out.”

2. Put the positive first. Positive psychology contends that positive emotions can help people flourish, but “we can’t just wait for them to happen,” Pileggi Pawelski says. “Couples that are the happiest actively nurture these emotions.” Doing so takes practice and requires grasping that these sentiments fall on a continuum, from those of high arousal like passion, amusement, and joy (often experienced at the start of a relationship) to calmer emotions like serenity, gratitude, and inspiration. If cultivating these feels unnatural, she suggests “prioritizing positivity,” which means scheduling the types of activities into your day that naturally lead to experiencing these emotions.

3. Savor the good, reframe the bad. “Positive emotions tend to exist in spades at the beginning of a relationship,” Pawelski says. “But we eventually have to go to work, get the car fixed—real life kicks in.” When that happens, he adds, we can wind up harping on the problems, the aspects of our partners that come to bother or annoy us. Instead, he recommends reintroducing balance by consciously focusing on the shared positive moments and experiences—past, present, and future—and intentionally shifting away from the negative. Doing so can “lengthen and strengthen” healthy emotions.

4. Play to each other’s strengths. Partners often dwell more on each other’s weaknesses than strengths. Pileggi Pawelski recommends that couples discover each person’s top five character strengths, commonly referred to as “signature strengths” and then plan dates that emphasize one from each partner. For example, if one person’s top strength is zest and the other’s is love of learning, they could take a Segway tour around a historical city to engage both.

“Research shows that when you’re exercising what you’re naturally good at, your individual well-being tends to go up,” she says. “This activity allows you to come together as a couple to exercise strengths from both partners. It’s a unique and powerful way to approach dates.”

5. Get grateful. “As we move further into a relationship, we may begin taking our partners for granted. Gratitude is one way to help us continue seeing the goodness in the other person,” Pawelski says.

To that end, it’s important to express that feeling by employing what’s called other-focused gratitude, which shifts the attention from “I” to “you.” Instead of appreciation stated with phrasing like, ‘Thank you for taking care of our child when I needed to finish this project,’ it’s said as, ‘Once again you stepped in. You are such a kind and thoughtful person.’

“This can begin a whole conversation about what aspect of the interaction our partner really valued,” Pawelski says. “Except in fairy tales, ‘Happily Ever After’ doesn’t just happen. Practicing these tips can help us develop the healthy habits needed to continue to be happy together.”

]]>http://www.futurity.org/long-term-love-advice-1679612-2/feed/0Millennials don’t want to delay spouse, house, kidshttp://www.futurity.org/millennials-life-goals-1679202-2/
http://www.futurity.org/millennials-life-goals-1679202-2/#respondWed, 14 Feb 2018 00:03:01 +0000http://www.futurity.org/?p=1679202Millennials are marrying, buying homes, and starting families later in life. But this group—young adults in their 20s and 30s—hope to reach important life goals at the same age as previous generations, including those now in their 60s, 70s, and older, according to a new study.

Researchers found that the ideal timing of major milestones has remained relatively constant across generations.

“Millennials want to achieve the same things around the same time as everyone else,” says Tamara Sims, a research scientist at the Stanford Center on Longevity, about the findings of the study, called the Milestones Project.

On average, people over 25 said they wanted ideally to marry by 27, buy a home by 28, and start a family by 29. However, the extent to which people reached these goals decreased with every successive generation, with those between 25 and 34 being the least likely to achieve them.

“Our findings suggest that young adults are not the disruptors that they have been made out to be,” Sims says. “They are indeed getting married, buying a home, and starting a family later than their ideal age at lower rates than other generations, but this decline did not start with them.”

As part of the project, researchers surveyed four generations—1,716 participants ranging from ages 25 to 75 and older—to find out when people hoped to attain their goals versus when they actually reached them.

The study shows that home ownership was a goal that the fewest number of American millennials actually reached. And millennials are not alone. Researchers found that even those aged between 35 and 54 experience a 7-year difference between when they intended to buy a home and when they did. Those 65 and older reported buying homes only one or two years after their ideal age for home ownership.

In addition, the study showed that millennials want to save for retirement sooner than previous generations, and 43 percent are actually doing so, more than any other older generation did when they were that age. This finding could be attributed to an increase in policies and programs promoting retirement savings in recent years, Sims says.

“Beliefs and values about the right way of doing things—in this case, when you should get married, buy a home—are very ingrained in our culture,” says Jeanne L. Tsai, a Stanford professor of psychology in her comments about the new study. “At the same time, I think the results on saving for retirement are really encouraging. They suggest that with education and alternative models for doing things, beliefs, expectations, and even behavior can change.”

Discrepancies between what people desire and what actually happens in their life can reliably predict poorer health and well-being, Sims says about previous research, noting that it is important to track these generational changes and strive to reduce those discrepancies.

“People are appearing to pursue ideals for life that were set around World War II, and it doesn’t make sense that we as a society haven’t questioned these ideals,” Sims says. “We hope this study, along with the center’s broader mission, helps people rethink their goals in this era of long life and empower younger generations.”

]]>http://www.futurity.org/millennials-life-goals-1679202-2/feed/0Listen: Where do criminals get guns?http://www.futurity.org/criminals-guns-1678122/
http://www.futurity.org/criminals-guns-1678122/#respondTue, 13 Feb 2018 00:11:41 +0000http://www.futurity.org/?p=1678122While policymakers argue about things like background checks for legal gun purchases, criminals, for the most part, are not getting guns through legal means, according to Philip J. Cook.

Cook, a researcher at Duke University, has been tracking the underground gun market in America for the last 15 years. For one project, his team went to one of the largest jails in the country and asked the inmates one simple question: where do you get your guns?

They talked to 99 inmates, which is remarkable, Cook says, in part because “anything that they told us about how they got a gun was basically going to be a confession of a crime that they’d committed.”

Easy as getting a beer

Samuel is a former gang member from Chicago. He says if you’re connected to a social network like a gang, it’s easy to get a gun. In his experience, getting a gun was as easy as getting a beer. Usually he didn’t even have to pay for the gun.

“You know you didn’t have to pay because whoever was in your gang that’s really leading the gang, they would have that connection,” Samuel says.

One thing that’s clear from Cook’s research is that something needs to be done to stop the flow of guns into urban neighborhoods like the one Samuel grew up in. And lawmakers can do something about this.

For example, laws designed to regulate legal gun sales can significantly affect the underground market. After Maryland passed a Firearm and Safety act in 2013, 41 percent of surveyed parolees in the state reported that it was more difficult to get a handgun.

And a study of over three decades of data on handguns recovered in Boston shows that fewer guns are illegally obtained from states where people are restricted to legally buying just one gun a month.

Going after the source

Cook argues for a change in the way law enforcement does its job.

“When a gang member or another dangerous person gets picked up that has a gun there needs to be a lot of questions asked about where that gun came from, what their source is,” he says.

If detectives spent time tracking down the history of the gun, Cook says, law enforcement could go beyond simply catching one perp with one gun. Rather, police might be able to arrest the person who sold that gun—and presumably other guns—into the underground market.

]]>http://www.futurity.org/criminals-guns-1678122/feed/0Dementia less likely for people with positive attitude about aginghttp://www.futurity.org/aging-positive-thinking-1677312-2/
http://www.futurity.org/aging-positive-thinking-1677312-2/#respondMon, 12 Feb 2018 23:55:50 +0000http://www.futurity.org/?p=1677312People who gain positive beliefs about aging from the culture around them are less likely to develop dementia, new research suggests.

Researchers found this protective effect for all participants, as well as among those carrying a gene that puts them at higher risk of developing dementia.

Researchers found that older people with positive age beliefs who carry one of the strongest risk factors for developing dementia—the ε4 variant of the APOE gene—were nearly 50 percent less likely to develop the disease than their peers who held negative age beliefs.

The study, which is published in PLOS ONE, is the first to examine whether culture-based age beliefs influence the risk of developing dementia, researchers say.

“We found that positive age beliefs can reduce the risk of one of the most established genetic risk factors of dementia,” says lead author Becca Levy, professor of public health and of psychology. “This makes a case for implementing a public health campaign against ageism, which is a source of negative age beliefs.”

Levy and coauthors, Martin Slade and Robert Pietrzak from Yale School of Medicine, and Luigi Ferrucci, scientific director of the National Institute on Aging, studied a group of 4,765 people, with an average age of 72 years, who were free of dementia at the start of the study. Twenty-six percent of the participants in the study were carriers of APOE ε4. The researchers controlled for factors including age and health of the participants.

The study demonstrated that APOE ε4 carriers with positive beliefs about aging had a 2.7 percent risk of developing dementia, compared to a 6.1 percent risk for those with negative beliefs about aging, over the four-year study duration.

Dementia primarily afflicts older people and is marked by memory loss and an inability to perform tasks.

]]>http://www.futurity.org/aging-positive-thinking-1677312-2/feed/0No, ‘volcanic winter’ didn’t decimate humans in E. Africahttp://www.futurity.org/toba-catastrophe-hypothesis-1677062-2/
http://www.futurity.org/toba-catastrophe-hypothesis-1677062-2/#respondMon, 12 Feb 2018 14:03:01 +0000http://www.futurity.org/?p=1677062The massive Toba volcanic eruption on the island of Sumatra about 74,000 years ago didn’t bring about a six-year-long “volcanic winter” in East Africa that caused the human population in the region to plummet, a new study reports.

The findings run counter to the Toba catastrophe hypothesis, which says the eruption and its aftermath caused drastic, multiyear cooling, and severe ecological disruption in East Africa.

“This is the first research that provides direct evidence for the effects of the Toba eruption on vegetation just before and just after the eruption,” says Chad L. Yost, a doctoral candidate in the University of Arizona geosciences department and lead author of the study in the Journal of Human Evolution. “The Toba eruption had no significant negative impact on vegetation growing in East Africa.”

“That a singular event in Earth history 75,000 years ago caused human populations in the cradle of humankind to drop is not a tenable idea.”

Researchers can use ancient plant parts that wash into and accumulate on the bottoms of lakes to reconstruct a region’s past ecosystem. Yost and colleagues studied microscopic bits of plants preserved in two sediment cores from Lake Malawi, which is approximately 570 kilometers (354 miles) long and is the southernmost of the East African Rift lakes.

Previous investigators found material from the Toba eruption in the Lake Malawi cores that pinpoints the time of the eruption and allowed Yost and colleagues to peer back in time 100 years before to 200 years after the Toba eruption. The team analyzed samples that represented, on average, every 8.5 years within that 300-year interval.

“It is surprising,” Yost says. “You would have expected severe cooling based on the size of the Toba eruption—yet that’s not what we see.”

The researchers didn’t find marked changes in lower-elevation vegetation post-eruption—but did find some die-off of mountain plants. Cooling from the eruption might have injured frost-intolerant plants.

Had the region experienced the drastic, multiyear cooling post-Toba suggested by the catastrophe theory, the cores would have evidence of a massive die-off of the region’s vegetation at all elevations, Yost says.

Part of the hypothesis suggests the eruption caused human populations to shrink.

“We know anatomically modern humans were living within 50 kilometers of Lake Malawi,” Yost says. “People would have been able to travel to habitats and lower elevations that had little to no cooling effect from the Toba eruption.”

Most of the region’s known archaeological sites are from low elevations, not the mountains.

“That a singular event in Earth history 75,000 years ago caused human populations in the cradle of humankind to drop is not a tenable idea,” says coauthor Andrew S. Cohen, professor of geosciences.

The Lake Malawi Drilling Project took the cores from the lake bottom in 2005. The lake is one of the deepest in the world–material archived in the cores goes back more than 1 million years.

Plant and animal material washes into lakes and is deposited on the bottom in annual layers, so a sediment core contains a record of the past environments of a lake and of the surrounding land.

Yost studied two cores taken from the lake: one from the north end of the lake, which is closer to the mountains, and the other from the central part of the lake. Other researchers had pinpointed what layer in those cores had glass and crystals from the Toba eruption, Cohen says.

Yost took samples from the cores that straddled the eruption and analyzed the samples for charcoal and for silica-containing plant parts called phytoliths.

If the Toba catastrophe hypothesis is true, the massive die-off of vegetation would have resulted in more wildfires and therefore more charcoal washing into the lake. However, researchers didn’t find an increase in charcoal outside the range of normal variability in the sediments deposited after the eruption.

“We determined that the Toba eruption had no significant negative impact on vegetation growing in East Africa,” Yost says. “We hope this will put the final nail in the coffin of the Toba catastrophe hypothesis.”

Lily J. Jackson of the University of Texas, Austin, and Jeffery R. Stone of Indiana State University are coauthors of the study. The National Science Foundation and the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program funded the research.

]]>http://www.futurity.org/toba-catastrophe-hypothesis-1677062-2/feed/060% of black women killed by police were unarmedhttp://www.futurity.org/police-killings-unarmed-black-women-1675912-2/
http://www.futurity.org/police-killings-unarmed-black-women-1675912-2/#respondFri, 09 Feb 2018 15:18:31 +0000http://www.futurity.org/?p=1675912Black people, especially women, are more likely to have been unarmed when killed by police than non-blacks, according to a new study of nationwide data.

This risk also appears to increase in police departments with a greater presence of non-white officers, report the researchers.

“…the ‘hands up, don’t shoot’ slogan of the post-Ferguson movement becomes most relevant when you also ‘say her name.'”

A key finding of the study is that nearly 60 percent of black women killed by police were unarmed at the time of the interaction.

The study is the first in a series of reports from the ongoing Fatal Interactions with Police (FIPS) research project, which includes contributions from public health and biostatistics experts at hospitals and universities.

While the odds of being killed by police when unarmed were about the same for black and white males, the high percentage of unarmed black women killed by police significantly increased the overall odds for unarmed blacks.

“Our analysis finds that the ‘hands up, don’t shoot’ slogan of the post-Ferguson movement becomes most relevant when you also ‘say her name,'” says lead researcher Odis Johnson, associate professor of education and of sociology at Washington University in St. Louis.

“Nonetheless, the odds of an unarmed fatality for black Americans as a whole was a staggering 6.6-to-1, more than double the odds found in several other national studies completed in recent decades.”

The “say her name” social movement was launched in 2015 to draw attention to the death of Chicago resident Rekia Boyd and other unarmed black women killed during interactions with police. This study is the first to provide hard data to back up the movement’s assertion that black women face a high risk of being killed by police.

Efforts so far

The study also suggests that many tactics implemented to curb police violence, such as the use of body cameras and diversifying police forces by adding more non-white officers, have done little to reduce the number of people killed in police interactions.

“Agencies with more officers of color had significantly increased odds of committing unarmed fatalities, suggesting that current levels of agency diversity are not capable of achieving change,” Johnson says.

“We recommend caution in interpreting this result since our data does not track the race of the police officers connected to each fatality. Thus, we are unable to say whether the actions of officers of color directly increase the odds of unarmed fatalities for racial/ethnic groups.”

The project plans to issue two more reports on related findings in coming months.

1,700 deaths in 20 months

The FIPS database includes details on about 1,700 fatal interactions with police that occurred in jurisdictions across the United States during a 20-month time period from May 2013 to January 2015.

It estimates the demographic odds of a fatality occurring during an interaction with police based on the location of the interaction and the characteristics of the likely responding law enforcement agency.

Other findings from the first report include:

Nearly 94 percent of those killed by police are men; about 46 percent are white; about 22 percent had a history of drug abuse or mental illness.

The ages of unarmed people killed by police in the database range from 5 to more than 100 years old, including people who were 101, 103, and 107.

More than 57 percent of African-American women were killed while unarmed; white men were the least likely to have been unarmed when killed at just under 20 percent.

Much more than a listing of fatal police interactions around the country, the FIPS database also contains a wealth of related demographic and law enforcement data that allows researchers to analyze the deaths in the context of local conditions. Database researchers gathered background on each case through an array of public records, including media accounts, death certificates, and obituaries.

In addition to US Census statistics on the location where the fatality occurred, FIPS includes data about local law enforcement practices and police staffing drawn from the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Survey (LEMAS), and crime statistics from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting program.

Collected by the Bureau of Justice Statistics from about 2,800 state and local law enforcement agencies, the LEMAS data offers details on a wide range of topics: agency responsibilities, operating expenditures, job functions of sworn and civilian employees, officer salaries and special pay, demographic characteristics of officers, weapons and armor policies, education and training requirements, computers and information systems, vehicles, special units, and community policing activities.

Support for the FIPS database project came from the Public Health Cubed Seed Funding from the Institute of Public Health at Washington University. Other researchers involved in the project are from Washington University School of Medicine; New York University; Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; Saint Louis University; SUNY Buffalo; and Wake Forest University.

]]>http://www.futurity.org/police-killings-unarmed-black-women-1675912-2/feed/0Does air pollution lead to more unethical behavior?http://www.futurity.org/air-pollution-unethical-behavior-1675812/
http://www.futurity.org/air-pollution-unethical-behavior-1675812/#respondFri, 09 Feb 2018 15:00:44 +0000http://www.futurity.org/?p=1675812Anxiety caused by exposure to pollution may make people more prone to cheating and unethical behavior, according to new research. And that can be a driver behind the higher crime rates in high-pollution areas.

“We wanted to know what explains this connection between air pollution and criminal activity,” says Julia Lee, assistant professor of management and organizations at University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. “We tested the theory that the stress and anxiety that comes from living with air pollution is a contributing factor. Our results support the contention that air pollution not only corrupts people’s health, but can also contaminate their morality.”

Lee’s coauthors on the study, to be published in the journal Psychological Science, are Jackson Lu and Adam Galinsky of Columbia University and Francesca Gino of Harvard University.

The researchers first analyzed nine years’ worth of air pollution data from the US Environmental Protection Agency and crime statistics from the FBI. They controlled for factors such as demographic variables, law enforcement levels, and poverty rates. The analysis revealed high levels of air pollution in a county predicted higher incidents of crime in nearly every category.

A series of experiments in the United States and India found a connection among pollution, anxiety, and unethical behavior. Since it’s unethical to expose people directly to pollution, test subjects were shown pictures of either polluted or unpolluted city scenes. Then researchers asked them to describe or write about how they saw that area and reflect on how they would feel as they walk in that area and breathe the air.

Coders (blind to the purpose of the study) rated the written descriptions on eight dimensions—distressed, irritable, nervous, scared, enthusiastic, excited, happy, and relaxed.

After describing or writing their feelings, researchers asked the test subjects to complete supposedly unrelated tasks with small financial rewards for correct answers or successful outcomes.

In one experiment, researchers told subjects of a glitch that allowed them to uncover correct answers on a word association test. In another, they were given a dice-roll game and told to self-report the outcome, with a higher score earning them more money.

In each study, subjects who looked at the polluted photo were significantly more likely to both express anxiety and stress in their descriptions, and to cheat on the tasks.

“What this tells us is that there’s an ethical cost to air pollution,” Lee says. “It increases anxiety and this leads to unethical behavior. It’s a mechanism from behavioral science that can help explain the connection between air pollution and higher crime rates.”